This over-the-top image is from a column in this morning’s Boston Globe talking about the Patriots. Notice the atrocity perpetrated on the poor word wither. It’s an odd mistake, because even my WordPress spellchecker alerts me that whithers is not a word. And it’s not like this is some late-night game writeup that no one has a chance to edit. Has the Globe laid off all its editors?
Meanwhile, people complain about the low editorial standards in ebooks written by independent authors. And people are correct. I’ve been reaching such a book, and it’s hard to believe that the author–or anyone–read the words he typed before the book was published. Surely someone would have noticed that he regularly mistook then for than, that he was unclear about the difference between its and it’s, that the tree he was writing about was a cypress and not a Cyprus. And on and on.
It doesn’t escape my notice, though, that this book is way more successful than any of mine, with dozens of five-star reviews. It’s true that some reviewers point out the spelling mistakes, but just as many people seem exercised by the author’s errors in military technology. (An M-16 apparently fires the 5.56 NATO round, not the 7.62 NATO round. Who knew?)
Standards are slipping everywhere, and no one seems to care. Also, you kids get off my lawn!
